BOOTLEG FILES 906: “Disney’s Yellow Submarine” (cancelled animated feature from the early 2010s).
LAST SEEN: Bits and pieces of the pre-production planning are on YouTube and Internet Archive.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: Disney never made any of the material available for commercial sale.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Not likely, unless a documentary on the subject is made.
Last month, this column shined its spotlight on “Strawberry Fields,” an aborted animated feature using covers of Beatles songs that was being produced in the late 1980s by Al Brodax, the producer of the 1968 classic “Yellow Submarine.” This week, we take a look at another piece of Beatles-related ephemera – a much-ballyhooed but quickly cancelled remake of “Yellow Submarine” that was planned for production and release by The Walt Disney Co.
In August 2009, Disney made a stunning announcement at its D23 Expo – the Beatles’ Apple Corps agreed to team with ImageMovers Digital, a joint venture between Disney and Robert Zemeckis’ ImageMovers studio, on a 3D CGI remake of “Yellow Submarine,” which was slated for a release in Summer of 2012 to coincide with that year’s Summer Olympic Games in London. However, in March 2011 Disney announced the plans for “Yellow Submarine” were terminated.
What went wrong? For starters, ImageMovers Digital’s first two features – “A Christmas Carol” (2009) and “Mars Needs Moms” (2011) – were massive box office flops. In fact, the commercial failure of “A Christmas Carol” was so intense that Mark Zoradi, president of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Group and the head of worldwide marketing, was forced to resign while the company announced it would shut down ImageMovers Digital after completing “Mars Needs Moms.” When “Mars Needs Moms” premiered in March 2011, the $150 million-budgeted film had an opening weekend gross of only $6.9 million.
Within Disney, there was a great deal of discomfort over the visual style of ImageMovers’ motion capture technology, particularly in regard to human characters. Disney gave Zemeckis permission to shop “Yellow Submarine” to other studios, but he was unable to spark any interest in the project. A meeting that Zemeckis planned with Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and the estates of John Lennon and George Harrison on the film was repeatedly delayed while efforts were made to ensure the production would go forth – the meeting was eventually cancelled.
Along with “Yellow Submarine,” ImagineMovers Digital was slated to create a sequel to “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” and a new IP work titled “Calling All Robots” – those films were never made.
But “Yellow Submarine” had already moved into pre-production, with storyboards and concept art created for the sequences, rendered clips of test animation done for several of the characters, and motion capture footage of a Beatles tribute band that were meant to simulate the Fab Four’s performances. Although actors were cast for the voice performances, their work had yet to be recorded; it is uncertain if a screenplay was completed.
Over the years, bits and pieces of the pre-production work emerged on YouTube and Internet Archive. These fragments point in the direction of a film that would have an interesting reconsideration of the 1968, with a darker tone in comparison to the droll wit of the original and musical segments that brimmed with imagination.
The three storyboard sequences that were discovered were turned into animated footage. The first encompasses the film’s opening in Pepperland – except that Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band are dead ringers for the Beatles and not the bearded and military-costumed ensemble of the 1968 film. The remake also has the Blue Meanies attacking the defenseless Pepperland in an air assault while this version of the once-bumbling Old Fred is a now more capable and virile character with a sexy young girlfriend and a flying horse.
The second storyboard sequence is unique to this film, with Old Fred watching live-action footage of the Beatles performing “Hey Bulldog” and realizing they are dead rings for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. In the original film, “Hey Bulldog” was part of the Pepperland liberation segment – although it was cut from the US theatrical release and not seen by Americans until the 1999 re-release.
The third storyboard sequence is a new interpretation of the “Eleanor Rigby” scene. Unlike the original where the number is followed by Ringo’s wandering through Liverpool, Ringo appears before the song. There is a whimsical moment when the submarine’s periscope appears out of a gutter puddle to spy on Ringo, and the “Eleanor Rigby” presentation is closer to the song’s lyrics in comparison to the 1968 film’s interpretation.
The rendered clips have the Beatles in a brief performance and a reprise of the group’s live-action appearance at the end of the 1968 film when they discover a new swarm of Blue Meanies aiming at them. The animation presents the quartet as caricatures of their mid-1967 appearances as opposed to the Pop Art characters in the original film. There are also two very brief character tests of one of the Blue Meanies frolicking maliciously.
The Lost Media Wiki website has a collection of all the available footage and stills from this intrigued but abandoned project. And while Beatles and animation fans will enjoy these rare gems, one person with no interest in the subject is Robert Zemeckis, who looked back on the effort in 2012 and sourly declared, “That would have been a great one to bring the Beatles back to life. But it’s probably better not to be remade – you’re always behind the 8-ball when you do a remake.”
IMPORTANT NOTICE: While this weekly column acknowledges the presence of rare film and television productions through the so-called collector-to-collector market, this should not be seen as encouraging or condoning the unauthorized duplication and distribution of copyright-protected material, either through DVDs or Blu-ray discs or through postings on Internet video sites.
Listen to Phil Hall’s award-winning podcast “The Online Movie Show with Phil Hall” on SoundCloud and his radio show “Nutmeg Chatter” on WAPJ-FM in Torrington, Connecticut, with a new episode every Sunday. His new book “100 Years of Wall Street Crooks” is now in release through Bicep Books.